MAGGIE GALLAGHER: A villain without a victim?

Every trial is a morality play, a tale of victims and villains, in which prosecutors offer to the jury (excuse me, "triers of fact") an opportunity to be the heroes: to thwart evil-doers and give the sweet succor of justice to the suffering.

The chief difficulty the House managers have experienced so far is defining the victim. They know the villain - the guy in the Oval Office who abused the public trust for his own selfish political and legal gain. But who exactly did the president injure by his criminal conduct? Ay, there's the rub.

"The rule of law," the managers intone, and of course they are right. A sitting president who commits perjury and obstructs justice - and then tries to cover his behavior with the thinnest, most transparent gauze of legalisms - invites every defendant in America to "tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth" in a similar manner.

But as victims go, "the rule of law" is a bit too abstract to be emotionally compelling. So the managers have pointed to Paula Jones, the plaintiff "in a sexual harassment case," as the president's victim. She was, as a federal judge ruled, entitled to the truth and the evidence Bill Clinton unlawfully withheld.

And of course, they are right about that as well. But as the designated victim, Paula Jones is also less than completely satisfying. For one thing, it is easier to prove the president's conduct was illegal than to show that it actually, in practical terms, hurt Paula Jones' case. Besides, she has already received $850,000 for her suffering.

So this past week, the House managers have increasingly entertained a new victim: Monica Lewinsky, a love-struck young woman, who was led into perjury, a crime from which she stood to gain nothing, by the most powerful man in the world.

The president, they suggest, tried to smear his former lover as "a stalker." Were it not for the little blue dress, Monica probably would have met the same fate as Kathleen Willey, whom President Clinton in his grand jury testimony personally slandered by intimating she was mentally unstable.

Maybe the House managers are trying to persuade the public to rally on behalf of this new victim. But I suspect their primary intended audience for this new plot twist is Monica herself. Perhaps Monica knows more than she has told so far. Maybe, for example, Monica has something interesting to say about this question: When the president said he didn't need to see your (false) affidavit because he had seen "15 others," what did you understand him to mean?

But even if her story doesn't change, the clarity and tone of Monica's testimony may have the power to sink President Clinton, if not in the court of public opinion, then in some future court of law.

Which is increasingly, it seems to me, the chief worry of Clinton's lawyers. Why the determined effort to portray Vernon Jordan and Betty Currie as the victims in this case? Why angrily slam the idea of summoning Vernon Jordan as a "gratuitous smear," while not bothering to personalize their arguments against calling Monica or Sydney Blumenthal in quite the same way? Why claim so indignantly that referring to Betty Currie as "loyal" is an insult?

Could they have had some future jury in mind? It takes only one stubborn person to hang a jury, after all.

Be that as it may, as you watch the next installment of this drama, keep your eye on the bouncing question: Who is the victim? Right or wrong, the fate of a president may yet hang on the answer.

Maggie Gallagher is a columnist and an affiliate scholar at the Institute for American Values. She can be reached at Universal Press Syndicate, 4900 Main St., 9th floor, Kansas City, MO 64112.

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